I tried it some months ago when switching the first three of our Hue lights off the bridge, mostly for bringing back the Amazon Echo integration, and I got it setup but didn’t succeed in adding my lights from ZHA onto that virtual bridge. I thought it would be more stable and compatible now…
Yes! That would be very good… unfortunately the dashboard creating is still not simple for most people. It would take me weeks to create something and with a job and 2 kids I just can’t annymore 
Is it really bare metal? I switched years ago to Z2M (now ZHA), but hearing all this fuzz about this change makes me wonder what are the benefits of using Hue integration vs ZHA/Z2M.
1 Like
Thank.you for the info. One question about zones and area. HA have area and zones. But in HUE app when you turn on a zone all lights ate go on off change color on same time. Will this be the same in HA or will all bulbs on or of one by one. That’s was so great of the HUE. Turn on whole house as it seems all bulbs are just one.
I used in past milight and every bulb went on then the order then the other. So it took some time before everything was changed.
The experience within the Hue eco system is certainly a bit smoother (at the moment), but I recently switched and I am not missing much functionality-wise:
- Scenes are currently not auto-discovered and HA has no support for transitions in MQTT scenes (the service allows you to set them, but the there is no way to pass the parameter to Z2M - also Z2M probably wouldn’t know what to do with it, but we don’t even get that far).
- Transitions for lights can only be set in whole seconds, Fractions are theoretically supported by Z2M, but neither the native frontend nor HA auto-discovery support that in their UI.
- Setting up switches (buttons, dimmers …) is tedious with HA automations. Switch Manager works pretty well most of the time, but I am having issues with transitions for one light group and debugging it is much harder than with native HA automations.
I wouldn’t doubt this has something to do with some requirement to use the “U.S. Cyber Trust Mark” on a companies products (as well as wanting to sell user data). Probably something like notifying users when there is a security vulnerability.
No, you need to set up ZigBee groups for that (which Z2M and ZHA both support),
Thank you. Then the switch to Zigbee is a option when HUE is really break everything.
Will the blue HA zigbee matter stick be a good one then?
Sorry for little off topic questions. But also think lots of non technical users are here and read this all.
this is not to say you shouldn’t move to ZHA, or complain to Hue. We need to, and I did.
Ha talks to Hue in away, it lets the Hue bridge do the talking to the bulbs as much as possible. So HA does not over burden the Hue system (which is easily done…).
Consider a HA script that flashes the lights. Before, we wrote that in some nifty HA scripting logic, continuously sending commands to the Hue Bridge and via the bridge to those bulbs.
These days, the HA integration just sends the command to the Bridge and lets that take care of it, and we can rest assured no system burden in introduced. We take advantage of the Hue bridge as much as possible, and in that, make HA much simpler too.
It pushes actively, so anything on the Bridge is sent immediately and available in the integration in HA
Active/Dynamic scenes are a very nice thing, all local on the bridge, or bulb even.
I have to agree adding those bubs to a Skyconnect Zigbee controller is effortless. Takes less than 3 secs. and initially the options dont look bad, and we can even set some initial settings we can not in the HA Hue integration (they’re all available on bridge though)(dont consider the Sensors, those are created via Powercalc, and are not available on the bulb/bridge):
But that is as far as it goes. No scenes on those lights, no Areas/Rooms, no connection to their motion sensors, switches, security sensors either, which is what I use without having to do anything in HA, and have to work when HA is down…
So yes, you can easily connect the bulbs and have no Cloud. But no, the experience is not the same. Far from it.
4 Likes
But you can set up scenes (AFAIK even “active scenes”) with Z2M, and you can use effects like “blink”. Automations have to be set up in HA (for example motion-controlled light), but that was technically the same with the Hue Bridge - it didn’t use ZigBee direct binding for anything. When the bridge was disconnected or rebooting, no light switch or motion sensor did anything.
Believe we shouldn’t let this topic turn in to a can/can not do in ZHA or what ever. HA can do a lot, but it takes a lot where Hue is easy.
This should be about Hue/Signfy not abusing our private data.
I dont mind creating an account, have a lot of those… I do mind about not knowing where my data went, and that things might start Not to work locally when I close down that connection…
Much of that has yet to be answered to by Signify, and we need to press on them to do so.
1 Like
Because of their increasing focus on the cloud data storage, I sold my Hue hub and I connect to my Hue bulbs using HA and an universal open hub. Since then I deleted my Hue cloud account.
For my home automation, I just need local access, no cloud required.
2 Likes
on the connections / apps that are allowed on your Bridges, it’s interesting to go to the advanced settings, (which reroutes to your account settings in the account.meethue.com environment. I had 132 apps connecting there 
most of them very old (older Ha instances, some that I had tested a few times) there are a Lot of Google listed (not sure if deleting 1 of them deletes them all…) and several python_hue listings.
taking out the non-used ones cant be bad, but dont want to break current functionality just yet, so need to understand which are which. In any case, Hue is very transparent there, listing all connected services we can delete individually (and, have allowed our selves in the first place earlier). So, not complaining, just being precise
Correct me if I am wrong, but why are you worried about Signify/Hue sharing your data when you are happy to use Alexa?
8 Likes
I’m ready to retire my hue hub. I don’t want to participate in their cloud shenanigans.
I have plenty of hue bulbs, light strips, spots all over the house and garden. I’ve got the hue hub and also another zigbee stick solution.
Most of my hue bulbs are on the local control only zigbe stick using zigbee2mqtt and are working nicely.
The bulbs that I have on the hue hub are for general areas of the house that I use the hue dynamic lighting scenes.
For example my kitchen use the hue labs active lighting scenes throughout the day, Sunset etc. These scenes are dynamic and the bulbs change colours smothly over time.
Outside I’m using the hue labs Outdoor Living Scenes to light the front of the house.
Can these dynamic scenes be controlled by something else? I’m happy to unpair the bulbs from the hue hub to the other zigbee stick if I can do this with another solution.
Requirements are that I can set an ambient scene to a group of light and have the colours change to complimentary colours in that scene every 30 seconds or so just like the hue labs does for me. Choice of scenes would be nice such as Romantic, Sunset, Sprint etc.
I do have the Ambient Lighting HACS thing for other areas of the house but this seems to just adjust the colour temperature and not do dynamic scenes.
Thanks!
I am not worried about my data here, but about compatibility (existing, unchangeable systems which only support the local Hue API) and reliability (for example control over mobile app when internet goes down, which I feel like is going to be removed from at least the official app in the next few months).
I am currently in the process of phasing out almost any control devices (except Echo Devices) that doesn’t allow at least basic local control, for example I am about to replace Tuya devices wherever I can with alternative, local devices
I personally don’t even use Alexa much (besides the announcement feature), but my family does, among other things, control lights with it on a regular basis, even if there were two switches (one Hue, one EnOcean) in 20cm reach, which is why that control is required to still work. It’s not working without internet anyway…
Even if you have an account, it still appears to be possible to block the bridge’s access to the internet without ill-effects. On the account webpage you get:
But locally lighting etc. continues to work normally. The Hue app works as usual too. With no internet access, there should not be any hub updates, so problem solved… until you want to add a new device. Not sure what will happen then, but for the moment it looks as if the data being collected relate to the bridge, not to devices.
At some point I imagine the HA integration will have to be modified - who knows what will happen then.
Edit: You’d have to turn off auto update for the app as well.
One more form to contact the who hue and tell what you think about them 
(working with ad/u-block enabled 
)
I don’t have an account and don’t use any of the fancy syncing features, but one thing the app does that I don’t think l you can do with HA is change the zigbee channel.
Anyone know if HA can do that?
I blocked internet access for the hub, but I don’t know if simply not updating the app on my phone is enough…it is afterall on the same network as the hub.
It’s not (only) about the data, it’s about control
With this move they can restrict access to devices that can be controlled locally, decide when something becomes obsolete for them, impose paid features, decide that HA is something bad and lock it out.
call me paranoid, but I don’t trust any company that makes this kind of move.
3 Likes